By Jahanara Shiraz | Manager, Academics (Non-formal Education)
Amna is a 9th-grade student at City Cambridge Grammar School in the Korangi Industrial Area of Karachi. She just finished her school exams at the top of her class and is about to sit for her final board exams. If you had predicted her future to her five years ago, she would have asked you if you had mistaken her for someone else. Five years ago, she was not in school and would spend her days working in a sewing centre to contribute to the meagre household income. Her father worked in a textile factory and her mother was a local midwife - their combined earnings were not enough to support their growing family of five.
She was recruited by Zindagi Trust to join their Paid to Learn school for working children, where she, along with other working children from the slums of Korangi, would finish primary school in an accelerated two-year course and also earn a cash scholarship to help cushion against the opportunity cost of missing work. When she first started school, she struggled with a painful lack of confidence, perhaps because she entered a classroom for the first time at a ripe age. She credits her teachers at the school with helping develop her self-confidence during those years, a memory that brings tears to her eyes.
She finished the primary course at the top of her class and was selected as one of the graduates whose secondary education would be sponsored by the trust. Our staff got her placed into a good private school not far from her home and guided her through the transition to the private grammar school. Amna maintained an impressive academic performance throughout, getting a top 3 position every year from sixth-grade through ninth-grade today.
Not forgetting her struggle when starting school, Amna has made it her mission to educate and empower the girls in her community through confidence-boosting and career guidance. She works with a team of six friends from schools to help develop self-confidence in girls like herself by sharing the stories of her own battles.
Amna wants to grow up to be a doctor. Her favourite subject at school is biology and she says she loves studying how the human body functions. She also works as a first-aid trainer after school in her community along with some friends. She believes that education and first-aid training changed her life and wants to help other girls from her community get the same opportunity to evolve and transform into well-informed, educated women.
Amna appreciates the local presence of Zindagi Trust in her area and points it out as a factor that encouraged her family and community to send their children to school. On behalf of Amna and all our students enrolled in the Paid to Learn programs, we would like to thank our donors for enabling the education of so many bright young students in urban slums across Pakistan.
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By Jahanara Shiraz | Manager, Academics (Non-formal Education)
By Jahanara Shiraz | Manager, Academics (Non-formal Education)
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